Senior Principal Engineer, GNC & State Estimation (GNC)

Location: San Diego, California; on-site

Company

hirify.global develops AI-powered autonomy and aircraft technologies through its Hivemind Enterprise division.

What you will do

• Define the technical vision, architecture, roadmap, and development priorities for GNC and state estimation.
• Build and grow a new specialist engineering team through recruiting, mentoring, onboarding, and technical standards.
• Design, implement, tune, and validate guidance, navigation, flight-control, and state-estimation algorithms and production software.
• Develop reusable GNC platform capabilities, including modular algorithms, interfaces, vehicle and sensor abstractions, and validation tools.
• Establish simulation, software-in-the-loop, hardware-in-the-loop, Monte Carlo, regression, and flight-test analysis workflows.
• Contribute to Runtime Assurance and help customers prepare technical evidence for aircraft airworthiness and qualification.

Requirements

• At least 15 years of professional GNC experience with aircraft flight controls, autopilot systems, navigation, and state estimation.
• Expert knowledge of aircraft dynamics, stability and control, guidance, estimation, inertial navigation, sensor fusion, and Kalman or nonlinear filtering.
• Demonstrated experience shipping and supporting production autopilot, flight-control, or integrated GNC software through flight testing and deployment.
• Significant technical leadership experience, including ownership of complex decisions and building or establishing an engineering capability.
• Strong current proficiency in C++ for production real-time software, plus MATLAB/Simulink or equivalent and Python or comparable tools.
• Master’s degree in aerospace engineering, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, robotics, applied mathematics, or computer science.

Nice to have

• Experience with GCAS/ACAS, detect-and-avoid, flight-envelope protection, Runtime Assurance, safety monitors, or recovery controllers.
• Experience with military or civil airworthiness processes, DO-178C, or comparable development-assurance practices.
• Experience with GNSS-degraded or denied navigation, APNT, multiple aircraft configurations, robust or nonlinear control, model predictive control, trajectory optimization, or advanced estimation.

Culture & Benefits

• Hands-on senior technical leadership combining individual contribution with team building.
• Cross-functional collaboration with Hivemind Enterprise, Hivemind Solutions, aircraft organizations, safety teams, and customers.
• Work focused on safety-critical autonomy, reusable aircraft capabilities, simulation-to-flight development, and airworthiness evidence.